Facing the Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

Leonora said, ‘James, I take it, is still in town?’
    Gwen nodded. ‘Yes, he phoned me just before dinner. He’s chatting with wine merchants and so forth, and seeing about the marquee, I think. Liaising, he calls it. In any case, he said he’d pick up a sandwich or something on his way home.’
    Rilla laughed. ‘James would never chat to anyone if he could possibly
liaise
, would he?’
    Gwen smiled, rather half-heartedly it seemed to Rilla. Rilla helped herself to another cup of coffee. James might actually be liaising on this occasion, but on the other hand he might not. She glanced at Gwen. In all the years since their marriage, she and James must have worked out a way of coming to terms with his past infidelities. Nowadays, she was a little tense when he came home late and somewhat the worse for wear, but she had put her foot down about driving right from the very beginning, so at least that was not a worry.
    â€˜That’s how my father died,’ Rilla remembered hershrieking at James during one blazing row she’d witnessed between the two of them. Gwen had been pale with fury and her voice sounded quite unlike her normal measured tones. ‘I’m damned if you’re going the same way.’
    Why did Gwen put up with it at all? She must love him, Rilla supposed. She wondered briefly whether she could stand life with James and knew she couldn’t. She wouldn’t have been able to overlook the women, right at the start of the marriage. As far as she was concerned, it would take only one tiny slip, one kiss even, and she’d be off. Or send him, the man, whoever he was, packing. Fidelity surely wasn’t too much to ask for. Or was it? Did people nowadays even care? She had no idea, and on her present form, she wasn’t likely to find out. Who the hell found true love at her age?
    She bit into her apple and turned her attention to what Leonora was saying. Something about her work. Rilla sighed inwardly, opened her mouth and prepared to make two cameos on afternoon soap operas sound like star parts for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Talking yourself up, it was called, and she’d grown rather good at it over the years. She tried not to sound defensive. There was nothing wrong with a mother showing some interest in what her daughter was doing. Grow up, Rilla, she said to herself, and launched into an account of the last commercial she’d been in.
    *
    In some cupboards, wire hangers made a sound like wind-chimes when you hung your clothes up, but not at Willow Court. Leonora didn’t believe in wire hangers. You might just as well take your best dresses and shred them at the shoulders, she used to say, with typical exaggeration. Still, Rilla had to admit that padded hangers covered in material that felt satiny to the touch were both pleasurable and oddly comforting. At least mygarments will be in good shape, she thought. Even if I’m not.
    She’d been here for some hours and everything was all right. She had managed to look out of the window, earlier on, and there was the kitchen garden in the afternoon sunshine, looking restful and pretty and not a bit threatening. She had to be careful of some places, of course, even in the house. If she wasn’t on her guard all the time, he’d appear in front of her eyes and the pain of that was too much to bear.
    If there was one thing in the whole world you never forgot, not ever, it was a dead child, and Mark was always with her, contained in her flesh and in every atom of her body, gathered more closely into her than he’d been in the months before his birth. There was no way that he could not be, but it was only here, at Willow Court, that she sometimes heard his voice, and even actually
saw
him, behind the curtain in the drawing room where he loved to hide, or sitting on the bench in the Quiet Garden with a cat on his lap. This, she thought sleepily, is a haunted house. I should be used to it